Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [51]
Sure enough, this morning the wind had abated and veered to the west, and the sea had calmed. The masts and lower yards were swayed up again and by noon they were making good progress with an easy breeze from westward. But the weather made sport of them still. Two miles round the head and just out of the road a whispering calm descended. The ship loitered, drying her sails in pale sunlight. Then the wind sprang up again but from the wrong quarter, from the south-west. Darkness fell as they made slow way southwards over a sea split with low ridges to the horizon.
Next morning, savagely out of temper at these perversities of the wind, Thurso was approached by the boatswain with a complaint that one of the men had made to strike him.
‘James Wilson, the man’s name,’ Haines said. ‘Others saw him raise his hand to me; it is not on my report alone.’
‘No matter if it was.’ Thurso considered the bright, narrow-set eyes and the bitter mouth of the man before him. ‘I take your word until I know different,’ he said. This was untrue – he trusted no one and least of all a man who offered to call witnesses before he was doubted. There were the lineaments of cruelty in the boatswain’s face. Thurso had seen them too often before in men of every type and cast of feature to be mistaken now. This was not necessarily a bad thing; if the men feared the boatswain they were likely to put more into the work; and they were at the beginning of a long voyage, the authority of the ship’s officers must be upheld. Thurso despised cruelty, as he did compassion, and all other redundant shoots of the human spirit. He knew he was not himself cruel but merely practical and obedient to the counsels of necessity. They came to him now: Reduce the man. Slight his grievance. Above all, do not seem to share it …
He took two paces forward to the quarterdeck rail, presenting Haines with his back. From here he looked down over the deck below for some moments in silence. The half-witted landsman that Barton had netted sat cross-legged amidships surrounded by piles of junk rope, drawing out yarns and knotting them together. His mouth hung open with the effort of concentration. Useless aloft, but Simmonds had said that hauling on a rope he was worth two. Beyond him, well forward, people were getting up tackle to brace the foremast stays: some of the standing rigging had slackened under the assaults of the gale. He made out the hulking Libby with his black patch, the starveling boy and the little Tynesider – this last was a handy one, he noted with sombre approval, he was shaping to the work well. There was blood down the front of his nankeen jacket. ‘What is his name again, the little one there?’ he said, keeping his back still turned on the boatswain.
‘Him takin’ up the slack? Cocky little devil.’
‘I asked you for his name, not his character.’
‘His name is William Blair, sir.’
‘And that milk-faced fellow beside him, the tall one who always seems to be looking through the air for something?’
‘That is Michael Sullivan, sir, the fiddler.’
‘Aye, we shall find a good use for his fiddle when we have the negroes on board. His clothes are falling off him. I cannot have a man walking about my ship in rags. I warrant he is verminous too. We will have vermin aplenty before we are done, we can try for a clean start at least.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He is not alone. I have seen others in the same case. That filthy little Scotchman –’
‘McGann, sir.’
‘When time affords, I want those men taken to the heads, stripped off and sluiced well down and their clothes burned. They can be given slop clothes from the stores and I want it charged against their pay.’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
‘Come forward to me here,’ Thurso said, turning slightly round. ‘Now regarding this Wilson, he is an able seaman, if I mistake not, a fore-the-mast